Disabling the Touchpad on my Inspiron 1545

I have a Compaq Laptop and have gotten spoiled by the button just above the Touchpad that allows me to turn the Touchpad off. Now, I have this one and I really need to know how to disable this one. It is so close to the spacebar that my thumb just touches it and it jumps up to wherever the cursor is. Personally, I think that is a stupid design that allows it to move just by tapping the touchpad without hitting the left button. But I have learned the last few years that stupidity is something that Microsoft and Dell seem to be majoring in nowadays. After 3 Dells, this will be my last. And my next one with have XP and not Vista and W7. I have both of them and they are junk!!

WHEW! That felt good!! I just had to get that off my chest!! Thanks for any help on the disabling question. I would think that it should take just a push of a couple of buttons that the ones they have at the top row, where you can connect or disconnect from your wireless or you volume or mute. That would be a good idea to put a button for the touchpad up there as well, but I guess that Dell didn't think that was important!! SORRY!! Just venting. But, I must say and then close, Dell is not the company it was 10 years ago!!!

Thanks, but it didn't work. I went over the "mouse properties" in Control Panel and there is not a button that says, Dell Touchpad. I do have an external mouse attached and it would fix the problem. Thanks anyway.

First of all, I completely agree that Vista was the worst thing ever. However, Vista was actually win7 in beta form. Vista would have been better, but they rushed the release of the OS and so they had to release it when they said they would. Second, Win7 is the most streamlined OS ever made, as far as windows is concerned. Dell has been trash for 15 years, not 10. XP was ok, but not the greatest. It takes some time to get used to Win7 if you never got that much experience with Vista, no matter how much it sucked, but if you stayed with Vista, then Win7 flows more naturally for you. You can't even order a laptop or desktop, or any kind of computer with windowsXP on it anymore as it's not supported by microsoft anymore. I run windows7 on 3 out of 5 computers in my home. The other 2 are too old to run it so they run XP. The ones that run xp are hardly ever used except for my kids or my neice to play on. If you can't use win7, you shouldn't use anything more than a calculator since you feel the need to do every step yourself. Both Vista and Win7 are called Living OS' because they LEARN from the users operations. Everything before Vista should be called idiot OS' because the OS needed you to tell them everything they needed to do.

my wife has the same laptop, it worked for her. the main post was most likely posted by a computard (someone that's retarded when it comes to tech help and probably thinks XP is still the greatest thing since sliced bread). Sorry, couldn't help it, from the main post, you can learn a lot about this person.

Just to correct what JMN81101 wrote, Microsoft will support WinXP with critical updates through Ends April 8, 2014.WinXP is not dead yet. A lot of businesses did not upgrade to Vista and will go directly to Win7.

I always get directed to Dell Support for help... But it's people like you that makes me not want to ask anything. If someone doesn't know as much as you do, it doesn't mean they are a computard! Or retarded. It just means they haven't learned yet. I really resent the name callling! And if you have nothing positive to contribute, why do u bother at all? Now I have the same problem, and there is no option under 'mouse properties' for touch pad. So what does that tell u about me?

If my laptop has XP, can I upgrade it to win7? I have a mini 110, laptop, and it worked on by Norton for a virus.. They got the virus out, but ninstalled something I needed when they did that.. It hasn't worked right since. I was going to trash it, but if I can switch out the old for a new OS, why wouldn't that work?? I really like XP, but might as well go for win7, since XP is getting pretty old. I sure won't get another one running Windows8.. I hate it! I hope that is not the way PCs are headed...

For now, I am here for the same problem as the original poster. I need to disable the touch pad. The darn cursor is jumping all over the place.. Driving me nuts, and I can't find a way to shut off the touch pad, which I think, is causing the problem.. Super sensitive and I think I might be touching it when I type. HELP!